Nervousness

“ Our disorderly nervousness, or nervous disorderliness, though it has been a tremendous asset in keeping us bounding along industrially and commercially, and though it gives an exhilarating, champagne-like flavor to our atmosphere, has cost us dear. ”

“ These so-called normal people are merely on the fringe of nervousness, on the border line between normality and disease. Beyond them there exists a great company of those whose lives have been literally wrecked by "nerves." Their work interrupted or given up for good, their minds harassed by doubts and fears, their bodies incapacitated, they crowd the sanatoria and the health resorts in a vain search for health. ”

“ Indeed it is the dogma of most official and unofficial doctors that the restlessness and hurry and noise which all are characteristic of the technical conditions of our time are the chief sources of the prevailing nervousness. ”

“ It is difficult to find our way out of a maze without some faint idea of the path by which we got in. He who brings to this chapter the popular notion that nervousness is the result of worn-out nerve-cells, can hardly be expected to understand how it can be cured by a process of mental adjustment. ”

“ A state of nervousness will ofttimes bring a heart-wringing crop of eruptions to the surface of the skin, and this condition is best remedied by plenty of baths, lots of fresh air, exercise, and a stiff but cheerful determination to brace up and not have any nerves—which, by the way, is much easier said than done, as most of us know to our sorrow. ”

“ One set ran under the rug to the screen and the other led to the clock. It is a physiological fact that nervousness superinduced by fear or a kindred emotion betrays itself by dryness of the mouth, stricture of the throat, irregular action of the heart and moisture and contraction of the hands. It is to the latter that I have confined myself exclusively during this test. ”

“ Nervousness may set our teeth chattering just as it may cause tremor through our sympathetic nervous system, disturbing the flow of blood through muscles and so disturbing control of them. Vehement emotion, anger, fright, and even those of less violence may cause similar effects. All these phenomena illustrate the close relation between mind and body. ”

“ Before we begin to talk about the real sufferer from "nerves," the nervous invalid, let us look for some of the earmarks that are often found on the supposedly well person. All of these signs are deviations from the normal and are sure indications of nervousness. The test question for each individual is this: "Am I 'like folks'?" To be normal and to be well is to be "like folks." Can the average man stand this or that? If he can, then you are not normal if you cannot. Do the people around you eat the thing that upsets you? ”

“ Paradoxical as it may sound, there is nothing the matter with a nervous person's nerves. The faithful messengers have borne the blame for so long that their name has gotten itself woven into the very language as symbolic of disease. When we speak of nervous prostration, neurasthenia, neuroses, nervousness, and "nerves" we mean that body and mind are behaving badly because of functional disorder. ”

“ If, for any reason, our attention is turned to and held on these sensations, they at once become exaggerated, and the organs giving rise to them tend to function badly. In this way any bodily organ may be disturbed in its action, and general symptoms of nervousness result through nothing but over-attention. ”

“ When I lay down in bed my nervousness returned fourfold. Everybody at all nervously excitable has suffered some time or another by the appearance of ghastly features presenting themselves in every variety of contortion, one after another, the moment the eyes are closed. ”

“ It is known only too well today by those who seek to know, that back of all such physical conditions as nervousness, prostration, temporary insanity, nervous disorders, pains resembling rheumatism, hay fever, heart troubles, mental symptoms, nervous chills, morbid forebodings and mild mania, there lurks the abnormal activity of the psychic or "thought body" caused by thoughts and feelings acting abnormally upon the vital centers of the nervous system and mind. ”

“ This condition is in some instances inherited, but is in most cases due to the wasteful expenditure of nervous energy or to the action of some drug upon the body. Excess of mental work, too much reading, long-continued anxiety, eye strain, and the use of tea, coffee, alcohol, tobacco, or other drugs, including many of those taken as medicines, are known to cause nervousness. Nervousness is not only a source of great annoyance, both to one's self and to others, but is a menace to the general health. ”

“ Nervousness Its Cause and Cure
The nerves of the human body are the most important, the most complex, and probably the least understood of any part of the human anatomy. In conditions of health they are never heard from, therefore every expression of the nervous system is a symptom of some abnormal physical condition. ”

“ Nervous Overstrain.—Both mental and physical overwork tends to weaken the nervous system and to produce nervousness. Where hard mental work is long continued, or where it is carried on under excitement, a tense nervous condition is developed which is decidedly weakening in its effects. The causes which lead to such a condition, and in fact overwork of all kinds, should if possible be avoided. ”

“ Yet modern physiology has shown that emotion is largely a physical matter, largely a thing of blood vessels, heartbeat, lungs, glands, and digestive organs. This physical foundation of emotion is a very important matter in our study of the housewife as of every other living person. For it is especially in the emotional disturbance that the origin of much of nervousness is to be found, and that on what may be called the physical basis of emotion. ”

“ Particularly interesting in this connection, as being illustrative also of an ingenious method of “mind tunnelling” nowadays frequently employed to get at forgotten memories, is a case reported by Doctor A. A. Brill, a New York psychopathologist. His patient was a young woman who applied to be treated for extreme nervousness. She had been perfectly well until three months before, when, she said, she had begun to suffer from a complication of disorders, including insomnia, loss of appetite, constant headache, irritability, and stomach trouble. ”

“ Nervousness.—Self-control is much more easily practiced by some than by others. This is due partly to habit, but is also due to an actual difference in the degree of sensitiveness, or irritability, of the nervous systems of different people. One whose nervous system tends to respond too readily to any and all kinds of stimuli is said to be "nervous." ”

“ Our nerves enter intimately into every feeling, thought, act of life, into every function of our bodies, into every aspiration of our souls. They determine our digestion and our destinies; they may even influence the destinies of others. Let us turn a few pages of a life and see the cost of defective nervous-living. ”

“ Our errors are surely not such awfully solemn things. In a world where we are so certain to incur them in spite of all our caution, a certain lightness of heart seems healthier than this excessive nervousness on their behalf. ”

“ Since this test of emotion is fundamentally sound, it is not surprising that the nervous man is in a state of distress. Indigestion, fatigue, over-sensibility, sound like problems in physiology, but we cannot go far in the discussion of any of them without coming face to face with the emotions as the real factors in the case. When we turn to the mental characteristics of nervous folk, we even more quickly find ourselves in the midst of an emotional disturbance. ”

“ But when action is hesitant there always seem several alternative possibilities of nervous discharge. The feeling awakened lay the nascent excitement of each nerve-track seems by its attractive or repulsive quality to determine whether the excitement shall abort or shall become complete. Where indecision is great, as before a dangerous leap, consciousness is agonisingly intense. ”

“ It has been my fortune as a physician to deal much with the so-called nervous temperament. I have come both to fear and to love it. It is the essence of all that is bright, imaginative, and fine, but it is as unstable as water. ”

“ Such are just the effects to be anticipated. After an average state of consciousness, absorbing but a small quantity of nervous energy, is aroused without the slightest notice, a strong emotion of awe, terror, or admiration, joined with the astonishment due to an apparent want of adequate causation. This new state of consciousness demands far more nervous energy than that which it has suddenly replaced; and this increased absorption of nervous energy in mental changes involves a temporary diminution of the outflow in other directions: whence the pendent jaw and the relaxing grasp. ”

“ To sum it all up—if you want to learn to help yourself out of "nerves" learn to rest when you rest and to work without strain when you work; learn to loosen out of the muscular contractions which the nerves cause; learn to drop the mental resistances which cause the "nerves," and which take the form of anger, resentment, worry, anxiety, impatience, annoyance, or self-pity; eat only nourishing food, eat it slowly, and chew it well; breathe the freshest air you can, and breathe it deeply, gently, and rhythmically; take what healthy, vigorous exercise you find possible ”

“ Nervous Attacks.—What we call, for want of a better name, "nerve force," or "nerve action," is at any one time a definite quantity. In health it is distributed to all the sets of nerves equally, so that all work in harmony. ”

“ There are moments in which the intensity of nervous strain seems to make every sense trebly acute, in which, without knowing it, we are aware of every detail of sight and sound that forms the material setting for a moment of great emotion. ”

“ A good nervous condition enables its possessor to put forth sound and healthy mental and physical efforts; gives a calm, quiet, happy, contented frame of mind, and a strong tendency to enjoy every thing—even the [Pg 48] bad; makes the most of life’s joys, and the least of its sorrows; confers full possession of all its innate powers; and predisposes to a right exercise of all the faculties.
Disordered nerves produce an irritated, craving, dissatisfied state of mind, and a tendency to depravity in some of its forms, with a half paralyzed, lax, inefficient state of mind and body. ”

“ Imagine two steel knife-blades with their keen edges crossing each other at right angles, and moving to and fro. Our whole nervous organization is 'on-edge' at the thought; and yet what emotion can be there except the unpleasant nervous feeling itself, or the dread that more of it may come? The entire fund and capital of the emotion here is the senseless bodily effect which the blades immediately arouse. This case is typical of a class: where an ideal emotion seems to precede the bodily symptoms, it is often nothing but an anticipation of the symptoms themselves. ”

“ Anxiety neuroses: A clinical type in which morbid anxiety or fear is the most prominent feature. A general nervous irritability (or excitability) is regularly associated with the anxious expectation or dread; in addition there are numerous physical symptoms which may be regarded as the bodily accompaniments of fear, particularly cardiac and vasomotor disturbances; the heart's action is increased, often there is irregularity and palpitation; there may be sweating, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, suffocative feelings, dizziness, trembling, shaking, difficulty in locomotion, etc. ”

“ How does fear operate upon the body [Pg 18] to produce sickness? By paralysing the nerve centres, especially those of the vasomotor nerves, thus producing not only muscular relaxation, but capillary congestions of all kinds. ”

“ An exceeding acuteness of the senses is the result of many forms of nervous disease. A heavy breath, an unwashed hand, a noise that would not have been noticed in health, a crooked table-cover or bed-spread may disturb or oppress; and more than one invalid has spoken in my hearing of the sickening effect produced by the nurse tasting her food, or blowing in her drinks to make them cool. ”

“ The shock to the nerve-centers which these momentary frights give, and the nervous strain which the city dweller endures from keeping a lookout for such dangers, can not fail to impair the strength of the nervous system. Through the nerves an injurious influence is exerted upon the heart also. ”

“ If we examine closely the symptoms of fear, we invariably find the symptoms of functional psychosis or neurosis. Fear affects the muscular and sensory systems, the vasomotor system, the respiratory system, the sudorific glands, the viscera, the heart, the intestines, all organs and functions of the organism. ”

“ Nevertheless I denied my condition, and so one day the doctor tried to explain it to me. “A person,” he began, “is said to be nervous when presenting a special susceptibility to pain, or exhibiting an undue mobility of the nervous system, as when one starts, or shakes on the occasion of abrupt or intense sensorial impressions, thus showing an exalted emotional susceptibility. ”

“ Rather might it be said that the neurosis is a way out of the dilemma. It is a harbor after a stormy sea, not always a quiet harbor, but at least a usable one. Unpleasant as it is, every nervous symptom is a form of compensation which has been deliberately though unconsciously chosen by its owner. ”

“ The first state means the approach of a nervous breakdown, the second a near death. There are very few, indeed, who retain a nervous balance and a calm judgment. And all have a harsh frightened voice. ”

“ One of the great gains of the century, says Sir Michael Foster, from whom we have already quoted, is in our insight into nervous phenomena. “We now know that what takes place along a tiny thread we call a nerve fibre differs from that which takes place along its fellow threads; that differing nervous impulses travel along different nerve fibres; and that nervous and psychical events are the outcome of the clashing of nervous impulses as they sweep along the closely woven web of living threads, of which the brain is made. ”